“You’ve got until the end of the month to get it done! It absolutely has to be finished before stake conference. No excuses!” Bishop Oaks practically screamed as he pushed us out of his office into the crowded foyer, slamming the door in our faces. At first, I just stood there, shocked. The bishop was making a real scene, and everybody was looking at us, wondering what on earth we had done to provoke such ferocious wrath from such a gentle man.
After the surprise wore off, I wasn’t sure what to think. I had never seen Bishop Oaks, or any church leader, this angry before. And I had an ex-Marine drill sergeant for a mission president, so I had seen righteous anger firsthand plenty of times. Maybe it was just because it was fast Sunday, and he’d probably been in meetings since 6:00 a.m. without eating. Or maybe he was just stressed out. He had been skippering the Boise Idaho West Stake Indian Lakes Ward for almost ten years—first as a counselor, now as a bishop—and it was taking its toll. He was trying to keep the Good Ship Zion afloat after all, and this meant personally counseling a boatload of people. The Joneses, the Watsons, and the Wilsons were all going through divorces. Brother Johnson, Brother Echols, and even my own wife were experiencing faith crises of one kind or another. And that’s not even counting the many adrift youth the bishop was responsible for, especially the boys, now with his new double duty as both bishop and Young Men’s president. Even at home, he had his hands full with eight children under fifteen and a wife with serious health conditions. Actually, I’m surprised he didn’t scream more often.
But I guess the bishop did have a point. We had already been working on the Ward Mission Plan for several months, and all the other wards in the stake had finished theirs weeks ago. If the bishop didn’t have something to give the stake president by stake conference, it would look like he couldn’t run a tight ship. We hadn’t had a convert baptism all year, so we weren’t just letting the bishop down; we were letting the stake president down, too, and possibly even God Himself, not to mention all the drowning souls we were supposed to be saving, or at least baptizing. Maybe a new and improved Ward Mission Plan was just the thing we needed.
But still, Bishop Oaks could have been a little more understanding. After all, this was our third Ward Mission Plan. We had finished the 2020 plan, after several months of wrangling, just before COVID-19 hit, so we had to relegate it to the scrap heap before it even got implemented. Then it took us several more months to put together new COVID protocols, switching from traditional missionary work to virtual, social-media contacting, and now we were having to go back to the drawing board yet again. We couldn’t just go back to the original plan. Too much had changed, and some of the new social-media tools actually were helpful. But all the COVID restrictions were now being loosened, so it didn’t make sense to keep the missionaries all bottled up in their apartments online all day and night. Now we needed to balance the two previous plans, and we didn’t have much time.
But that’s not the worst of it. Not by far. I could have written a Mission Plan in one afternoon if I was doing it by myself, but I had to craft this plan with Brother Richardson, a seventy-three-year-old used-car salesman who’d read too much Zig Ziglar, so his vision of missionary work was just a step above snake-oil salesmanship. Not only that, he served his mission to London back in the Sixties, and he still had his mission flipchart, so getting him to back off on door-to-door tracting to embrace new social-media practices had been a complete nightmare. He still used a flip-phone. And a Blackberry. If he had any real responsibilities, I’m sure that he would have had a pager, too. As I attempted to sneak out the back door, I remarked to Brother Richardson, “I guess we have our work cut out for us.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll call you,” Brother Richardson reassured me—though I certainly had no worries about that. A mere three phone calls later—and I knew from experience that it could have been worse—Brother Richardson and I had at least worked out a general plan. We still had four weeks before our plan was due, so we would devote one week to each section of the plan: missionary work, retention, and activation. Then we would take the final week to tweak any loose ends. And the bishop agreed to focus next week’s Ward Council exclusively on the Ward Mission Plan. Before that meeting, however, Brother Richardson wanted us to prepare some initial ideas. I wanted to meet on Wednesday, but Brother Richardson felt this was putting off our sacred responsibilities and not being anxiously engaged enough. We couldn’t meet on Monday, of course, because that was Family Home Evening, so Brother Richardson insisted we meet Tuesday.
* * *
So we met on Tuesday. Then we met again on Wednesday. And Thursday.
I shouldn’t have been all that surprised. After all, Brother Richardson already took our calling a little too seriously, and being directly reprimanded by the bishop can put the fear of God into anyone. But I was still annoyed. Thursday Night Football was Buffalo versus the L.A. Rams, two of the league’s top teams. The Rams were the Super Bowl champions even—it was going to be one of the best games of the season. I couldn’t bear to miss it, so I got Brother Richardson to agree to meet as soon as I got off work. Maybe I could still catch the second half after we finished. After all, we had already met twice that week, so how much more could there be to discuss?
I wasn’t all that surprised as my dreams of catching the game evaporated quarter by quarter, but Brother Richardson was the ward mission leader, and I was just his assistant. I had to defer to his priesthood authority. The sticking point was that the numbers and metrics had to be just right. Brother Richardson’s mission president had taught him that if you don’t set your goals precisely, you can’t count on the Lord to bless you to accomplish them. Instead, you flounder directionless without any exact numbers to guide you. So, we said another prayer in the middle of our meeting. We had, of course, already started the meeting with a prayer, but Brother Richardson just wanted to make sure that the numbers we were discussing were truly inspired.
We had already agreed that each companionship should teach at least 15–20 discussions each week. We had also agreed that each companionship must give out at least 2–3 copies of the Book of Mormon every day—though Brother Richardson had initially argued that this number should be much higher—and that they should also maintain a weekly pool of at least 10–15 investigators. What deeply troubled him now was that we had to decide on a yearly baptismal goal for each companionship. He insisted that this was the most important part of our whole plan. In particular, he was concerned that if we set the number too high then the missionaries might not be able to achieve it and would get discouraged, but if we set it too low then we weren’t showing enough faith in God’s ability to work miracles. The missionaries needed a goal that would stretch their faith and show them that with God’s help they could accomplish all things unto the glories of the eternities and the worlds hereafter, etc. This wasn’t just any old number; these were precious souls, great in the eyes of God even, so we had a solemn duty to save them.
We had negotiated all night and agreed that 18 was too high, but 8 was too low, so at least now we had a ballpark figure to work with. I had suggested that we just pick somewhere in the middle, like 12–14, but Brother Richardson insisted that the number had to be exact, and he himself was wavering between either 13 or 16. After all, Brother Richardson’s mission president had said that God works with exactness and precision in all things and pays attention to even the smallest of details. And setting such precise goals nearly doubled the number of yearly baptisms in Brother Richardson’s mission. Brother Richardson had personally set a goal for only seven baptisms because London was a difficult mission back then, even with the baseball baptism program, but Brother Richardson ended up having nine baptisms (a whole team). But he had never forgiven himself for not having enough faith to set his baptismal goal higher. He still felt as if God had blessed him, in abundance even, because at least he had set an exact goal like his mission president had directed. The important thing in God’s eyes was exactness. You know, precise numbers and well-defined metrics.
By this point, however, all I could think about was how many yards Stafford was throwing for. After all, he was the quarterback for my fantasy football team—I had just missed drafting Russell Wilson, my favorite player—so I was looking forward to Stafford having a record-breaking season. I checked my phone to see the score. It was tied 10–10 at halftime. I couldn’t believe I was missing this, so I texted my wife to commiserate. She immediately texted back a “sorry” emoji, and I returned to negotiating with Brother Richardson. I suggested that if our numbers specified a range of baptisms, it was more likely that all the missionaries would reach the number. Otherwise, the missionaries who fell short would feel like they didn’t have enough faith to baptize, while the missionaries who exceeded the number would feel like they didn’t have enough faith to set their goal high enough. Maybe the missionaries who exceeded their goal would even get puffed up in pride. Either way, it didn’t make sense to me that every missionary would have the exact same number of baptisms.
“I’ve never thought of it quite that way before,” Brother Richardson conceded, and this was maybe the first time I had ever heard Brother Richardson concede anything. “That does make a lot of sense. We do want to set our goals with exactness, but we also want all our missionaries to achieve their goals. Maybe we could agree on a range like 12–14, but let’s make it a little higher, like maybe 13–15.”
“That sounds perfect,” I agreed, hoping that now I could leave and catch some of the third quarter. “Shall we conclude with a prayer?”
“Not so fast,” Brother Richardson countered. “We can’t just set a goal and expect to reach it without having a plan for how to make it happen.”
“A plan?” I did everything I could to hide the fact that I was groaning. “Haven’t we already discussed the missionaries’ metrics and responsibilities all week long?”
“Yes, but we still need something like a 12- or 15-Step Path-to-Baptism Plan that will help the members get more involved. The missionaries won’t be able to achieve their goals without the members’ help. Remember what President David O. McKay said about every member being a missionary.”
“Well, which should it be? 12 or 15?,” I asked, even though Brother Richardson, like always, didn’t catch my sarcasm. Instead, he took my question deadly seriously.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe we should pray about it.”
Not another prayer. That would cost me another three or four plays. “Great. I’ll say it.” I made it short and sweet, though I did make sure to ask if our plan should have 12 or 15 steps.
“Well, what did you feel?” Brother Richardson asked sincerely.
“I didn’t really get a strong impression one way or the other,” I admitted.
“Well, I did,” Brother Richardson insisted. “I distinctly feel like it should be 15. That will allow the members to take more time and not rush the process.”
“Then 15 it is” Not wanting to miss any more of the game, I jumped right in with suggestions, “Members could invite nonmembers to eat dinner or meet with the missionaries in their homes. They could also give their friends a copy of the Book of Mormon or invite them to church. Look, there are four possibilities already.” Maybe this wasn’t going to be so hard after all. Maybe I could still catch some of the fourth quarter.
Brother Richardson added, “They could also invite their friends to listen to a broadcast of Music & the Spoken Word with the Tabernacle Choir on Temple Square or present them with a framed copy of the Proclamation on the Family.”
That all sounded a bit weird. How exactly do you invite your friends over to your house at 9:30 on a Sunday morning? And the Proclamation on the Family isn’t exactly our most uncontroversial document. But I wasn’t about to get in Brother Richardson’s way. If he was coming up with more steps, then I was going to green light them as fast as I could. Occasionally he shot down a few of my ideas, but I put up no resistance just to keep things moving. After we came up with 15 steps I blurted out, “Great. We’re finished.”
“Not so fast,” Brother Richardson again countered. “Now we need to organize these steps into a systematic order. We have the steps, but now we need the path for how to proceed from one step to the next. Fellowshipping, like the Covenant Path, needs to be done in a precise order.”
And there went the first half of the fourth quarter. Once again, Brother Richardson was taking things too literally. Were members supposed to give their friends a Book of Mormon before or after they invited them to listen to Music & the Spoken Word? Were they supposed to invite them to dinner before or after they introduced themselves as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, always using the whole complete divine name of the church, of course? Did it matter? There might be a precise order to the ordinances of the gospel, but wasn’t there at least a little flexibility in fellowshipping? But Brother Richardson was having none of that. “Once we number the steps from 1 to 15, we can be done,” he conceded, so I got right to work agreeing with every one of his suggestions. Miraculously, we succeeded in numbering each of the steps. Mission accomplished.
When I got home, however, there sat my wife intently watching my game eating a ginormous bowl of popcorn. Maybe I was the one who needed to try out one of those faith crises. “I’m glad your meeting finally ended,” she consoled me. “I was hoping you’d make it home to watch some of the game with me, and there are still 4 minutes and 32 seconds left,” even if all I got to see was Stafford lead a meaningless drive that petered out on a 4th-and-14 on the Buffalo 16 after Buffalo had long since iced the game. Not that I missed much as far as Stafford’s performance was concerned. My wife informed me that he threw three interceptions and had a dismal quarterback rating of 63. That wasn’t going to help me win any fantasy games this week.
* * *
And I certainly wasn’t looking forward to Ward Council Meeting on Sunday. Sure, we had the first third of our Ward Mission Plan ready to show the bishop, but wasn’t he going to think it was a bit excessive, not to mention inflexible? Anyhow, I let Brother Richardson present our plan to the Ward Council, and nobody blinked an eye. They just accepted it. Maybe I had been a little too hard on myself. I thought our whole three-day Ward Mission Council had been a total mockery of how councils were supposed to work. It had been a total mishmash of overthinking by Brother Richardson and me simply going along with every one of his crazy ideas just so I could get back to my game. Surely, this wasn’t what Elder Ballard meant when he directed us to use councils, and yet even the bishop had approved our plan wholeheartedly. Maybe the Lord does work in mysterious ways.
That was until the bishop threw a wrench in the works. “This is a good start,” he began, “but now we need to decide the unique contribution each auxiliary will make.”
Oh no! Here we go again, I thought to myself. I hope the auxiliaries aren’t as hard to work with as Brother Richardson. On that account, however, I was pleasantly surprised. Each of the auxiliary leaders said that their presidency would get a list of the activities they could contribute before nightfall. Sure enough, by a little after 8:00, the Relief Society and both the Young Men and Young Women leaders had followed through. The Relief Society had come up with more than 75 ideas, and the youth leaders had planned a plethora of ways to use social media to do missionary work. Only the Elders Quorum had fallen down on the job, but surely it would only take a few more days to get some ideas from them, too. Working with Brother Richardson was like pulling teeth from a gorilla, but the Ward Council had its act together. The first week had gone well enough; now it was on to week two and retention. Hopefully, that would be an easier nut to crack. After all, half the Ward Mission Plans I had consulted online didn’t even mention retention. Surely, it couldn’t be that difficult. For the first night in a week, I slept soundly.
* * *
That was until I got a phone call from Brother Richardson at 6:30 in the morning. “I’m sorry to bother you so early, but something has come up at work, and I’m going to have to leave town, so could we have an emergency meeting of our Ward Mission Council tonight? I know it’s Family Home Evening and all, but the ox really is in the mire. And I’m inviting all the ward and full-time missionaries to join us, so that we can gather a broader range of ideas. As you know, Elder Ballard has counseled us to always use councils whenever possible.”
I wasn’t all that concerned about Family Home Evening because my wife and I didn’t have any kids yet, so we didn’t have Family Home Evening anyway. Consequently, I quickly agreed and hung up the phone. Then about an hour later it hit me. What had I done? Tonight was Monday Night Football, and it was the Seahawks versus the Broncos. This was Russell Wilson’s first return to Seattle after his trade, and now with Wilson at the helm, Denver was my new favorite team. I couldn’t miss this, and yet I had already agreed to another pointless meeting. And this time we weren’t even meeting until 6:30, just after kickoff. I would be lucky to catch any of the game, and I was certain that Brother Richardson had already called all the missionaries, so I couldn’t cancel now. I was just going to have to magnify my calling with an Abrahamic sacrifice. This is the Lord’s work, after all, and he has promised us glorious blessings for staying on the Covenant Path. I guess since I had already covenanted in the temple to sacrifice all my time and talents to the building up of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, what could I do? I would just have to bite the bullet and give up another game for the cause. My only satisfaction was that it probably wasn’t going to be a good game anyway. The Broncos should put the game away well before halftime.
I wore my new Wilson Broncos jersey to the meeting as a kind of silent protest—not that anyone noticed or cared—and I even showed up ten minutes early, hoping that the Lord would reward my promptness with an early finish. But I’m not sure Brother Richardson has ever concluded a meeting early, and we couldn’t even start on time because all the ward missionaries straggled in five or ten minutes late. The full-time missionaries were more than fifteen minutes late, but they had called to say that they were on their way and Brother Richardson refused to start without them.
“Let’s start with a prayer,” Brother Richardson began, once the missionaries arrived. I could only hope this would at least be our only one for the night. I volunteered so I could make it short again.
Then the dam broke. The full-time missionaries began. “We asked Brother Richardson to include us in this meeting because us missionaries have found that the single biggest obstacle to a successful missionary program is retention. We can baptize people, but they always stop coming to church within a few months because the members aren’t doing anything to fellowship them. We have talked to Brother Richardson about how we want to make this ward the best example in the whole mission of how the members can help retain new converts, so what can we do as a Ward Mission Council to help the members fellowship?”
This wasn’t good news. Last week, Brother Richardson had insisted that precise numbers and metrics were the most important element of the Ward Mission Plan, and it had taken us three days to choose them—all with only two people in the room. Now the real missionaries were telling us that the grand key to a successful Mission Plan wasn’t numbers at all but retention. How long was it going to take to solve that even larger puzzle with almost fifteen different people?
Brother Richardson began next, “I can testify that what the missionaries have said is true. I baptized ten people on my mission, but only two of them were still members by the time I left England, and only one is still active today. Because of a lack of retention, basically all of the work I did on my mission went down the drain. And I bet it was the same for most of you on your missions. How well did the wards retain new converts in your mission, Brother Pingree?”
“Not at all,” I had to admit sheepishly. I had baptized over thirty-five converts on my mission in Chile, but less than ten remained active by the time I left. I’ve lost contact with the few who remained, but I’d be surprised if more than two or three were still active now.
“And you Brother Echols?” Brother Richardson continued.
“Pretty much the same thing,” he replied. “Although I only baptized two people in Belgium. But neither of them was still active by the time I left.”
Then we went around the room with everyone concurring. Brother Watson in Cambodia, Brother Jones in Alabama, Brother Young in Bolivia, Brother Smith in Ghana, Brother Rogers in Brazil, and the four full-time missionaries serving in our own ward had all had the same experience. Sister Echols and Breighlynnann Rogers, the youth representative to the Ward Missionary Council, hadn’t served missions, so their experience didn’t count. At least now everyone was aware of the magnitude of the problem, but what were we going to do to solve an intractable problem that had plagued the church’s missionary program for multiple generations? We did what every church council has done since time immemorial: we brainstormed ideas willy-nilly on a chalkboard: We could have the bishopric meet with every new member, we could assign members to attend the Gospel Doctrine class to fellowship new converts, we could distribute a ward Relief Society newsletter every month to keep new members informed about what is going on at church, we could assign multiple ministering companions to all new converts, etc., etc. We had no shortage of ideas. The bigger problem was: Would any of them work? Certainly, most of these ideas had been tried before and mostly failed, and the rest were a little far-fetched. Would inviting new converts to sing in the ward Christmas pageant really keep them active? Contacting every convert’s extended family members online to see if they were also interested in the gospel? And even if we did make a foolproof plan, would any of the members follow through with it? But we got the job done. We made our list, preposterous as it was, and I was finally free.
And this time I even caught a big chunk of the fourth quarter, and it was exciting. It went right down to a missed 64-yard field-goal attempt by Brandon McManus with 20 seconds left. Seattle played surprisingly well and held on for the 17–16 upset. My wife said that she thought Geno Smith even outplayed Wilson himself. I could hardly believe it, but that’s the beauty of the NFL. Unlike church, you never know what’s going to happen. Any given Sunday anything can happen. Maybe my wife getting to see all these games without me was some kind of karmic payback for the sordid history of polygamy and women being denied the priesthood.
* * *
Now we were down to our last goal: reactivation. And at least this week we met on Wednesday, so I wasn’t going to miss another game. But it looked like we had our work cut out for us.
Because reactivation was a job that involved the whole ward, Brother Richardson had invited the whole bishopric and the entire Ward Council to provide the input of each auxiliary. I know, I know. Brother Ballard has counseled us to use councils, but was all this really necessary? Sure, I get that the Elders Quorum and Relief Society presidents needed to be there, but did the Young Men, Young Women, and the Primary need to be represented? I mean the auxiliaries had already come up with ideas about how they could contribute to missionary work, did they also need their own plans for reactivation, too?
I didn’t think so, but Brother Richardson thought otherwise. In fact, he started the meeting by asking the Primary president directly if she had any ideas about how the Primary children could contribute to the ward’s reactivation efforts.
“Well, I’ve never really thought about it,” Sister Johnson admitted. “What can Primary kids do? They barely understand the gospel themselves.”
“Well then, maybe it’s time to think outside the box a little,” Brother Richardson gently reprimanded her. “If we want to be successful in this sacred calling, then we need to use all our resources, and haven’t the prophets declared that every member is a missionary, including children?”
“Well, maybe we could have them sing more songs about missionary work. Maybe we could even have them go on splits with the missionaries when the missionaries are trying to reactivate families with children.”
“See, that’s the spirit!” Brother Richardson congratulated her. “We can all put our shoulders to the wheel and help gather Israel each in our own special way.”
Next, Brother Richardson turned to the Young Men and the Young Women presidents, and it was pretty much the same thing. At first, the leaders demurred, admitting that they didn’t have many ideas. “Maybe we could develop a ministering program for the youth to minister to other inactive youth,” Sister Olsen finally suggested.
“See, I knew you could come up with something,” Brother Richardson beamed. I’m not sure if he was so excited just because he had more planks to add to the Ward Mission Plan, or if he was just pleased to be making so much progress in front of the bishop. Everyone knew he was gunning for a bishopric position himself, even at his age, but also, he was just in his element. He loved this stuff. I guess I just didn’t share his enthusiastic zeal, let alone his borderline irrational exuberance—or at least I wasn’t convinced that the gospel had to be quite so complicated.
Next, came the Relief Society president, and everything was just the opposite. She rattled off idea after idea. After all, her organization had already come up with more than 75 ways to help with missionary work, and now she had dozens more suggestions on how to help with reactivation: newsletters, websites, weekly visits with double ministering companions for inactives, meals, treats, birthday cards, singing telegrams with hymns, potlucks, special bi-monthly ward activities, themed dances for adults, framed pictures of the temple, etc. The list was a mile long, and she must have spoken for several hours. The final list was truly impressive, even by Brother Richardson’s standards. In Sister Young he had met his match.
“Well, that is an impressive list, Sister Young,” he admitted, secretly jealous of the way the bishop had also congratulated her thoroughness. Maybe Sister Young would be called as the next bishop. Everybody knew she was the most qualified person in the ward. Maybe it was time to give women the priesthood like my wife always complained. All I could think, however, was that this spelled trouble for me. Next week when Brother Richardson and I finalized the Mission Plan, all he would be able to think about was how he had to outdo Sister Young. We were going to be at it all week long. We were going to be up all night tonight, too, if the elder’s quorum president was even half as thorough as Sister Young.
Then luck struck. The bishop noticed that it was almost 11:00, and he had a policy of never letting a meeting go past 11:00. He felt that even leaders needed to be home with their families at a decent hour. So, he proposed that we dismiss the meeting and let the elder’s quorum president just email his suggestions to the rest of the council later.
Good thing it was only Wednesday. If it had been Thursday, I would have missed another whole game.
* * *
Luck struck again the following week. I convinced Brother Richardson to meet on a Wednesday again, so my Thursday night game was safe. As always, we started with a prayer which Brother Richardson insisted on giving himself, no doubt because he thought that his prayers were more spiritual than mine, or at least longer, and this was our final meeting before our Ward Mission Plan was due, so he must have figured that we needed the extra boost. Not only did Brother Richardson insist on giving the prayer himself, but he also wanted to start the meeting with a special thought: a quote from the prophet, President Russell M. Nelson. He read it in an especially solemn voice, even by his elevated standard, and the quote was full of superlatives which no doubt pleased his sensibilities, but it seemed histrionic to me. I know I’m not supposed to say that about the prophet, but I guess Brother Richardson’s own histrionic streak was starting to grate on me, and I was afraid that I was in for a long night of it. He read slowly, enunciating deliberately and gradually elevating his voice to make the quote seem even more spiritual than it already was: “The gathering of Israel is the single most important thing taking place on earth today. Nothing else compares in magnitude, nothing else compares in importance, nothing else compares in majesty. And if you choose to, if you want to, you can be a big part of something big, something grand, something majestic!”
He started by saying that he had gone through the Church’s General Handbook to see if our plan followed all the proper protocols, and sure enough he had found several discrepancies. The Handbook clearly stated that children couldn’t go on splits with the missionaries. He was afraid that this might disappoint Sister Johnson, but he wanted to follow every rule with exactness. “And,” Brother Richardson continued, “instead of having the kids go on splits, I’ve designed a simplified Six-Step Path to Baptism that they can use to guide their own missionary efforts.”
“After all, there’s nothing against that in the Handbook,” I noted, my sarcasm again going unnoticed.
“Moreover,” he added, “I realized that the full-time missionaries were supposed to always coordinate their missionary activities with both the ward mission leader and the member of the elders quorum presidency assigned to oversee missionary work. We haven’t made that explicit in our plan, so we will need to add that.” He then proceeded to go through a dozen or more changes that we needed to make—to comply with the Handbook—while I nodded in agreement. After all, who was I to argue with the General Handbook even though it seemed just as fastidious as Brother Richardson. It and our Mission Plan were a match made in heaven.
After he finished all the corrections that we had to make because of the General Handbook, he opened our meeting for general discussion. He wanted to know what other changes I thought needed to be made. “Well, I suppose that we just need to format it with some bullet points and check the grammar and spelling. Honestly, it looks good to me.”
What Brother Richardson said next, however, surprised me. “While this is indeed very good work, and we have certainly been anxiously engaged in magnifying our callings, I still think that we haven’t given the Lord the full 100% that He requires. Listen again to what the prophet has said. This work is big. It is grand. It is majestic. It is nothing less than the marvelous work and a wonder prophesied by Joseph Smith himself. It is without a doubt the single most important thing happening on earth in these latter days before the Second Coming of the Lord. Don’t you think we should give it one more final push, our very best effort? Don’t you think we need to dig in one last time with all our heart, might, mind, and strength?” At that, Brother Richardson decided he needed to offer one final prayer to make it absolutely certain that the Holy Spirit testified that God had accepted our offering. Now I’m not one to roll my eyes at a prayer, but I couldn’t help myself this time. Brother Richardson prayed for nearly ten minutes, using every superlative and all the scriptural language he could muster. By the time he concluded, I was stunned into silence. I have heard a lot of prayers in my day, but I had never heard anything to remotely compare with this.
Brother Richardson proceeded to pull out both a notebook and an extensively annotated copy of our Mission Plan, explaining in his own peculiar way, “Last night I fasted and prayed even like unto Enos, pleading unto the Lord with all my heart that I would receive a final revelation about what we need to perfect our Mission Plan, so I hope you won’t mind if I add a couple more items and make a few minor final revisions.”
“Not at all,” I demurred, wondering what all Brother Richardson and the Holy Spirit had cooked up together. Who was I to get in the way of a prayer even like unto Enos’s? But his list of additions was far from a couple, and his revisions were neither few nor minor. His notebook was full of several dozen new ideas, many of which he had added to both the auxiliaries’ and the full-time missionaries’ already lengthy lists of responsibilities, completely usurping their revelations. I mean, weren’t we supposed to counsel with our fellow church councils like President Ballard always recommended? His amended draft literally bled with red ink. It was as if he wanted to start the whole process over again with nothing but his own radical ideas. This was more than I could take. I had been broken down. “It looks perfect,” was the best I could muster. Once again, Brother Richardson failed to notice my resigned sarcasm as I rolled my eyes one last time and bolted. My nightmare was over. I was free at last.
* * *
Or so it seemed, but the Lord still had one more turn of the screw to force me into submission, into accepting His will unconditionally, even like unto Abraham. Brother Richardson turned in his final revision of our Ward Mission Plan to the bishop on Sunday, and the bishop praised us for our superb work even though he said that it was a little longer than he had expected. He said that he would pass it on to the stake president as soon as stake conference was over because every document in this stake needed the stake president’s final approval. He was as much a micromanager as Brother Richardson was a fanatic.
Ah, but stake conference. There’s the rub. There was nothing that could have prepared me for the complete and utter disaster that was about to happen at stake conference. It started out more or less normal. I attended both the leadership meeting Saturday afternoon and the adult session Saturday evening. One or two of the talks stood out as moving, but everything was business as usual.
Until the stake president began to speak at the Sunday session. The first half of his talk was an ordinary sermon about the importance of missionary work. Reasonably eloquent to be sure, but still all stuff that I had heard dozens of times before. He even quoted the same quote Brother Richardson had recited from President Nelson about how big missionary work was. “Looks like Brother Richardson and I are at least on the right track,” I thought to myself.
That was when the stake president struck a dagger into my heart. “The stake presidency and I have prayed together this weekend,” he continued. “And we have unanimously decided to adopt a new combined Stake Missionary and Family History Plan that we drafted last night. This will greatly help to hasten the Gathering of Scattered Covenant Israel on both sides of the veil simultaneously. The ushers will now hand out a laminated copy of this plan to everyone in the congregation. We expect everyone in the stake to follow it with exactness and diligence in all things. Put it on your refrigerators and consult it every day before you leave your homes.”
“What on earth?” I exclaimed inside my head. After wasting almost every night for an entire month, we had drafted our third Ward Missionary Plan in three years, and before it even got implemented—in fact, before the stake president even got a chance to see it—the stake presidency had replaced it with something they just whipped up over the weekend after a single prayer. This was devastating. I have never felt so outraged in all my years of service in this church, including my two long years as a missionary. Could this be happening? Was I hearing him correctly? This all had to be some kind of misunderstanding. He couldn’t mean that the Stake Mission Plan would replace all the Ward Mission Plans even if that seemed to be the explicit words coming out of his mouth. So, instead of screaming, as I wanted to do, I just bit my tongue until it practically bled. After all, what else could I do?
Writhing in my own personal hell, however, the least I could do was see what this new Stake Mission and Family History Plan actually said. I could at least give it a chance. My priesthood duty, even common decency, required me to at least do that much. That’s when the usher handed me my copy:
“What the hell?” I almost screamed out loud. This was infuriating. Brother Richardson, bless his soul, was stark, raving mad, but at least he magnified his calling. At least he was anxiously engaged. But this was it. This was the best the stake presidency could muster. I could have done this in five minutes on the back of a tithing envelope. I mean, I’m not saying that our Ward Mission Plan was perfect. In fact, it was excessive to the point of being fanatical. It was convoluted and extreme, verbose and rambling. It was outright bombastic. In the end, it even violated the autonomy of every auxiliary in the ward, except for maybe the Elders Quorum who never got around to enumerating any duties whatsoever. I even disagreed with most of Brother Richardson’s final edits, but at least he had poured his whole heart and soul into it. At least he had tried, even praying like unto Enos. Had the stake presidency done that?
I missed L.A. vs. Buffalo for this? I missed Russell Wilson’s debut with the Broncos for this? I stood up disgusted and stormed out of the building, right in the middle of the meeting, taking my wife with me. Not that she minded all that much. By this point, she was pretty much only attending church just to support me, and the stake president had already offended her a half-dozen times before getting to his half-assed Stake Mission Plan. Every single speaker in the whole conference had been a man, like always, and the stake president kept referring to his wife as his helpmeet. My wife hated that word.
As soon as I arrived home, I turned on the tv, and there were still almost six minutes left in the fourth quarter of Seattle vs. Detroit. I even got to see three scores, including Geno’s game-winning drive, in a thrilling 48–45 nailbiter. What a game! I’d been waiting all year to see a game this good! Detroit made it interesting at the end, but Seattle ultimately won. Was this my sign from God? If it was, I wasn’t sure what it meant. Did he really think one Seahawks miracle could make up for wasting my entire month?
Robert Bennett is a professor of English at Montana State University. His short story, “The New Calling,” was recently published in Dialogue. He is currently working on a novel titled Elder Lithium: The Misadventures of a Manic Mormon Missionary.
